Cryptohopper review: the trading bot costs from $29 a month and holds no coins

Cryptohopper is a Dutch trading bot that runs in the cloud and places buy and sell orders on your crypto exchange according to fixed rules, via an interface. The short answer on cost: Cryptohopper does not currently offer a free plan. According to the provider's pricing page, the three subscriptions cost $29, $69 or $129 a month, or the equivalent of $24.16, $57.50 or $107.50 a month when paid annually. To try it out, there are three days of Explorer from sign-up.

For investors, Cryptohopper is above all a tool for trading coins such as bitcoin automatically without sitting in front of a screen at night. The bot itself holds no coins; they stay in your exchange account. If you want an overview of all providers of this kind first, you will find it in our comparison of crypto trading bots. This guide explains what Cryptohopper costs, what the individual plans can do, how the connection to the exchange works and where a bot reaches its limits.

What is Cryptohopper? A cloud trading bot since 2017

A trading bot is a program that places orders on an exchange by itself according to rules set in advance. It replaces the hand on the buy button, not the decision about which rules make sense. According to the company, Cryptohopper was founded in Amsterdam in 2017 by the brothers Ruud and Pim Feltkamp; it is now headquartered in Edam in North Holland.

Unlike a program you install on your own computer, Cryptohopper runs on the provider's servers. Your laptop can be switched off and the bot keeps working. Everything is controlled through the web interface or the iOS and Android app. There you set which coins the bot may trade, how much it buys in with, when it takes profits and when it limits losses.

Besides automated trading, the platform offers a trading terminal with charts and order books, through which you can also place orders yourself. The provider also advertises an AI feature meant to detect market trends and switch the bot to a different strategy. How well that works cannot be verified from the outside; there are no reliable independent evaluations of it.

Who the provider designed the bot for

The target group is retail investors who want to trade according to rules but do not want to program their own software. If you only buy coins for a fixed amount once a month, you do not need a bot: an exchange savings plan is enough. Cryptohopper only starts to make sense for investors who trade several times a week and want to hand that work over to fixed rules.

Cryptohopper pricing: three subscriptions from $29 to $129 a month

Cryptohopper bills in dollars; according to the provider, prices are quoted excluding VAT where applicable. The pricing page no longer lists the former free Pioneer plan; entry is via a three-day trial of the Explorer plan. According to the provider, a subscription can be refunded within two weeks of purchase.

The strategy interval describes how often the bot checks its rules against current prices. On the Explorer plan it looks every ten minutes, on the Hero plan every two minutes. For investors betting on hourly or daily moves, the slower interval is usually enough. If you want to react to fast swings, you pay considerably more for the shorter interval.

What the more expensive plans add

Even the Explorer plan includes trading signals, paper trading, backtesting and the strategy designer. According to the pricing page, Adventurer adds advanced dollar-cost averaging features and arbitrage between exchanges. Hero brings AI strategies, an AI designer, market-making tools and arbitrage both between exchanges and within a single market. Depending on the plan, there are also 2, 5 or 10 event-based triggers and 10, 25 or 65 portfolio and manual bots.

The subscription does not include your exchange's trading fees or products from the marketplace. Copy bots, which automatically mirror someone else's strategy, cost an extra $9.99 to $99.99 a month, according to the pricing page.

Exchanges supported by Cryptohopper: ten connections via API

Cryptohopper does not trade itself; it sends orders to an exchange where you hold your own account. The list of supported exchanges on the provider's website currently names ten: Binance, Binance.us, Bitvavo, BingX, Coinbase Advanced, Crypto.com, HTX, Kraken, KuCoin and OKX. Binance.us is not open to customers in Germany, which leaves nine connections there, not all of them equally suitable.

The connection runs via an API, a programming interface through which two systems exchange data. You create an API key at your exchange, a pair consisting of an identifier and a secret password, and enter it at Cryptohopper. From then on the bot may query prices and place orders in your name. You decide at the exchange exactly which permissions the key has.

More important than the number of connections is whether the exchange is authorised in the EU. Since the transition periods of the European crypto regulation MiCA ended, providers serving customers in the EU need authorisation as a crypto-asset service provider. The bot changes nothing about that: your coins sit with the exchange, and its supervision, custody rules and insolvency protection determine how safe they are there.

Strategy, backtesting and paper trading: how the bot makes decisions

The heart of Cryptohopper is the strategy, the set of rules by which the bot buys and sells. In the strategy designer you combine technical indicators such as moving averages, the Relative Strength Index or Bollinger Bands into buy and sell signals. An indicator is a metric calculated from past prices and volumes that is meant to show trends or excesses.

Before real money is at stake, two test steps are worth taking. With backtesting, you run a strategy over historical price data and see how it would have performed in the past. With paper trading, the bot trades play money at real, current prices. Neither costs capital, and both have limits: a backtest only shows what would have worked before, and paper trading only partly reflects execution problems such as slippage in a thin order book.

Trailing stop, DCA and arbitrage explained

A stop loss is a fixed sell level that limits losses. A trailing stop is a sell level that is pulled up as the price rises. If a coin rises 10 percent and then falls back by the set distance, the bot sells and locks in part of the gain. DCA stands for dollar-cost averaging: if the price falls after a purchase, the bot buys more according to rules and so lowers the average entry price. That can smooth losses, but it also ties up more capital in a falling position.

Arbitrage exploits price differences: if a coin costs less on exchange A than on exchange B, the bot buys there and sells here. In practice such gaps are small and close quickly, and fees and transfer times often eat up the advantage. Market making, finally, means placing buy and sell orders just below and above the market price at the same time and earning the spread in between. Both functions require experience and are better left to professionals.

If you would rather evaluate signals and metrics yourself than leave them to a bot, you will find suitable tools in our comparison of analytics platforms.

Marketplace and copy bots: third-party strategies cost extra

In the Cryptohopper marketplace, external providers sell signals, strategies, templates and copy bots. Cryptohopper expressly notes there that the products do not come from Cryptohopper itself and that it is not liable for losses from their use. In the listings shown in mid-November, prices ranged from free templates through strategies at around $8 to $90 to copy bots for around $45 a month.

A signal is a buy or sell recommendation that a third party sends to your bot. A template is a ready-made bot configuration that you adopt and adjust. A copy bot mirrors another user's trades onto your account; this principle is called copy trading. Profit figures shown in individual offers are sellers' advertising claims, not audited returns, and say nothing about the future.

In the end, the marketplace only shifts the question: instead of building a strategy yourself, you have to judge whether an outside provider is reputable. A long, traceable track record, a backtest across different market phases and a trial run in paper trading before real money is at stake all help.

API key without withdrawal rights: why the coins stay on the exchange

You make the most important security setting at your exchange, not at Cryptohopper. When creating the API key, permissions can be granted individually: read prices, trade, withdraw. According to Cryptohopper, it only needs the first two. The provider's help centre expressly advises disabling withdrawal rights, explaining that a leaked key could otherwise send coins away from the exchange.

Without withdrawal rights, an attacker with a stolen key can still place orders but cannot move coins out. That is not entirely harmless: targeted purchases in very illiquid markets can damage an account even without withdrawals. Many exchanges therefore also let you restrict a key to specific IP addresses; check with support beforehand whether Cryptohopper provides fixed addresses for this.

This model differs fundamentally from Telegram bots, which create a wallet for you and manage its keys themselves. How risky that can be was shown in October by the case of the Bloom Trading Bot, in which users' wallets were drained. With Cryptohopper, by contrast, the balance sits in your exchange account and the bot only has the right to trade.

Three settings for a safe start

1. Create the API key with read and trade permissions only, with withdrawals disabled.
2. Turn on two-factor authentication at the exchange and, where offered, on the bot account too.
3. Use a separate sub-account or a limited amount for the bot, and keep the rest of your balance apart.

At what portfolio size the Cryptohopper subscription pays off

The subscription fee is due whether or not the bot makes a profit. A simple calculation before you start is therefore worthwhile. The basis is the cheapest annual plan, Explorer, at around $290. The bot has to earn this amount before anything is left for you.

On top of that come the exchange's trading fees. An example based on our own assumptions: the bot trades 40 positions a month at $250 each, each position consists of a buy and a sell, and the exchange charges 0.25 percent per order. That makes 960 orders a year with a combined $240,000 in volume and around $600 in fees. Including the subscription, that is just under $890 a year. With $5,000 of capital, the bot therefore has to make almost 18 percent just to break even.

The calculation shows that with small amounts the fixed price eats up almost all of the potential return. Only from a mid four-figure portfolio, and with an exchange that charges low fees, can the subscription even get into the range where it pays for itself. There is no guarantee that the bot will achieve the required return. A detailed cost-benefit assessment of bots from all providers is in our guide crypto trading bots: how they work and when they pay off.

Cryptohopper's limits: what a trading bot cannot do

A bot trades faster and with more discipline than a human, but only as well as its rules. A strategy that makes money in a sideways market can trigger a losing streak in a sharp downtrend like November's. The AI feature is supposed to detect such shifts; the provider does not back up with independent data whether it does so reliably.

You should know four weak points. First, overfitting: if you keep tweaking a strategy on the backtest until the past looks perfect, you build rules for a market that no longer exists. Second, dependence on the exchange: if its interface fails or throttles requests, orders are left hanging. Third, costs, which eat up the return on small portfolios. Fourth, convenience: a bot running unattended can pile up losses for days before you notice.

Then there is exchange risk, which a bot does not reduce. If an exchange gets into difficulty, the coins the bot manages there are affected too. Choosing an exchange authorised in the EU is therefore more important than choosing the bot.

Cryptohopper reviews: what users report

If you look for experiences with Cryptohopper, you quickly end up on review sites such as Trustpilot. Opinions there range from praise for fast, friendly support to reports of heavy losses. Such individual reviews are not a test and reveal more about users' expectations than about the quality of a particular strategy, because the result depends almost entirely on the settings chosen and the market phase.

The company itself says it usually answers support requests by ticket or email within 24 hours, though it can take longer at weekends and for complex problems. The provider's website is also available in German. A subscription taken out through the app in the App Store or on Google Play is cancelled there, not on the website.

Cryptohopper in practice: who the bot suits

Cryptohopper makes sense for investors with a basic knowledge of technical analysis, a portfolio in the mid four figures or above, and a willingness to review strategies regularly. For beginners who want to invest in cryptocurrencies for the long term, a savings plan at an authorised exchange is cheaper and simpler, not least because fewer trades mean less record-keeping.

Cryptohopper: test for three days first, then around $290 a year

Cryptohopper is an established tool for rules-based trading, but it is not a cash machine. The bot costs from $29 a month, holds no coins and depends entirely on the exchange you connect it to. Three steps help you proceed in a structured way:

1. Choose your exchange: First decide which exchange your balance should sit with, and compare fees and offerings in our crypto exchange comparison.
2. Check authorisation: Make sure the exchange is authorised in the EU under MiCA; our comparison of regulated crypto exchanges gives an overview.
3. Prepare your records: Before the bot makes its first hundred trades, set up a tool that captures every order; you will find providers in our comparison of crypto tax tools.

(As of November 14, 2026. This article is not investment advice. Prices and fee structures change; check the terms with the provider before you buy.)